


Walking in a Winter Wonderland

by luninosity



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Exploration, Love, M/M, Snow, Space Husbands, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starship Captain Charles Xavier grew up on a lonely space station and has never seen snow. Executive Officer Erik Lehnsherr is very good at strategic planning, surprises, and kissing Charles. Plus there's a starship named after Charles Darwin, new uses for Erik’s espionage past, and the possibility of lizard people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Walking in a Winter Wonderland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ikeracity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/gifts).



> For ike's Secret Mutant prompt.

“Erik,” Charles says, “a moment, please.”

Erik waits just a beat before turning to face him; the pleasure’s in the anticipation, in the knowledge that Charles will be gazing at him, one eyebrow cocked, there whenever Erik looks. As is the case now. As is the case always.

“Yes, Charles?” By all rights it ought to be _yes, sir_ —Charles is his captain, is the head of this whole insane and intrepid crew, and Fleet protocol demands as much. It isn’t, though, because this is Charles, who simply waves away decorum and invites any stray being in need of a home to find refuge on the United Fleet Starship _Charles Darwin,_ named as is tradition by her first captain and in this case unembarrassedly after the hero of Charles’s scientific interests; Charles, who smiles at Fleet Commander Fury and disarms every last complaint about how peace-treaty negotiations shouldn’t be accomplished at the wrong end of Erik’s blaster. Charles, who compensates for his physical limitations by, where any other starship captain would feel obliged to hide both the stimulus net around once-shattered legs and the required thermal layer to compensate for the constant-cold side effects, instead simply letting the metal peek out without fuss if it becomes necessary to roll up his pant-legs during planetary exploration or to fiddle with the control at his waist for extra support. Charles throws on a cardigan over his uniform for the chill, and settles into the captain’s chair like a benevolent Old-Earth lord of the manor.

A kindhearted one, though. Probably the sort of lord who’d help with the harvest alongside his men and drink in the pub with them after and solve all their problems with an earnest look from those blue eyes and the stubborn conviction that everything could be sorted out if people would just let themselves be a bit better than they currently were.

Erik may’ve read one or two Old-Earth novels in his spare time. Historical ones. Really. He’ll tell anyone who asks that Miss Austen is an astute and perceptive observer of human nature. And that should be that.

Charles had bought him a priceless first Martian edition of _Persuasion_ for his last birthday. When Erik’d asked how, given that they were two years and thirty-six days into a five-year deep-space exploratory mission, Charles had smiled angelically and observed, “I’m very charming,” which is of course true. “That’s not an answer,” he’d said, and Charles had said, “Oh yes it is,” and pulled his head back down into another kiss.

Erik, who is not-so-secretly of the opinion that nine-tenths of all sentient beings are at best useless, is entirely willing to threaten, maim, and otherwise intimidate anyone who resists Charles’s optimism. Erik is a realist— _pessimist_ , the rest of the bridge crew mutters, along with _paranoid_ and _shark teeth_ and _what the hell, seriously, sometimes the cactus is just a cactus and not trying to kill anyone_ —and Charles is something else altogether, something rare and beautiful and exotic even in the furthest depths of space: Charles is hopeful.

Charles has lived through trauma and agonizing recovery and Fleet Academy years with stumbling legs and well-meaning cruelty and bruises visible and not, and still smiled at Erik, the day that a gleaming white Fleet flagship had happened upon his broken tiny planethopper, scarred and bleeding air, victorious and dying. Charles smiles at him every morning.

Charles deserves all the happy endings. Romance. Kisses under starlight.

He gets up and follows Charles into the tiny briefing room, so close he can feel the fuzzy blue warmth of that cardigan on his skin. Himself at Charles’s back, keeping him safe. Where they both forever should be.

Charles settles a hip against the table, crosses arms, tilts his head. “Care to inform me why we’ve changed course, Executive Officer Lehnsherr?”

“Because I love you.” He comes over and puts his hands on Charles’s shoulders, feeling all that compact strength, powerful muscle beneath deceptively cuddly knit wool. “Because it’s a surprise.”

“Oh, indeed. And have I indicated at any point to you that I enjoy surprises?”

“You do,” Erik says, and kisses him, meaning it to be firm, decided; the kiss turns softer, though, almost wistful, the second he tastes Charles on his lips. Sometimes he still can’t believe it. Some mornings he wakes up, face pressed into dark wavy hair and one hand flung over a pale freckled hip, and has to catch his breath because the joy hurts so wonderfully.

“Mmm,” Charles says. “All right, I do. But, Erik, if you’re going to alter the ship’s destination in the middle of the night, I do need to know about it. Are we expecting hostile natives? Easily irritated demi-gods? Far too coincidental alternate history that requires investigation?”

“No.”

“Is this…” Charles hesitates. Chooses words with care. “…one of those missions?”

“No.” Erik has never technically worked _for_ Section 31. More _with_. Accepting assistance. Begrudgingly. They’d had the resources of the entire government to throw behind him, off the record, naturally. He’d’ve been a fool to reject the offered aid, and they’d wanted interplanetary arms dealer, drug dealer, and all-around evil-doer Sebastian Shaw dead almost as much as he had.

Since the day that Charles scooped him up out of space, Shaw’s deceased body tumbling through the void in the distance, he’s _assisted_ with precisely two missions, simple message-drops and nothing else, though they’ve requested many times more. In return, he’s got birth and education records that aren’t his, a modest amount of money that’s nevertheless sufficient to buy Charles unusual otherworldly non-replicator teas on occasion, and a falsified Academy graduation certificate that’ll satisfy anyone wondering why the rescued space riffraff deserves to be Charles’s XO.

Charles knows all of this. Charles knows everything about him. Erik, to his own surprise, rather likes that feeling.

“It’s not one of those missions? Then—”

“I told you. Surprise. We should be nearly there.”

“Hmm. Scott and Logan know about this, don’t they.”

“And Raven, and Hank,” Erik says cheerfully, and Charles tries to glare at him but doesn’t quite succeed. “You’ve corrupted my entire bridge crew.”

“They adore you.” Technically Hank isn’t bridge crew, lurking in the medical bay most of the day, but he likes to call in and talk at Charles regarding obscure scientific points of debate. Charles will happily argue about multispecies genetic variance from morning to night, indulging in the love of research that’s his second passion, right up there with seeking out new life and new civilizations. Erik’s never been through proper Fleet training, but is fairly sure that standard bridge protocol doesn’t involve genteel bickering over whether the bile sacs of Centurian chameleon leopards are comparable to the acid pouches evolved by New Australian kangaroo-bats, while in the background the blind helmsman and cigar-chomping astronavigator make how-did-we-end-up-in-this-asylum faces at each other.

They’d all die for Charles without being asked, every last one of them. Erik knows the feeling.

They’d all been instantly on board when he’d suggested the detour, too.

“You’re honestly not going to tell me?”

“You’ll find out in…eight minutes.”

“I trust you unreservedly. Will there be lizard people?”

“No.” He considers this for a moment; amends, “I don’t believe so,” because, well, they’d only got the preliminary survey data to go on when he’d ordered the course change. There _could_ be lizard people, hiding.

He may need to confer with Raven before they land. Charles’s head of security tends to see expeditions his way, namely the way that involves minimizing any potential danger to their captain, sometimes with heavy artillery, sometimes with elaborate infiltrative disguise. She’s probably got something that’ll work on lizard people, assuming the lizard people don’t take one look at enthusiastic blue eyes and resolve to instantly lay down their weapons and devote their lives to making the universe a better place.

“So,” Charles says, “eight minutes.”

“Yes?”

“I could continue pestering you about our destination…”

“Charles…”

“…or you could find some means of distracting me. I’m quite certain you can come up with a diversion.”

“Oh…yes, all right. I can definitely come up with—”

“I’m sure you’re good for at least five minutes.”

Erik stops sneaking hands up under the accommodating cardigan to observe, “You are aware that you’re going to pay for that later tonight, repeatedly, at great length;” Charles says happily, “Indeed,” and lets Erik push him gently back onto the glossy surface of the briefing-room table, where the cardigan proves, for the hundredth time, a very satisfactory cushion.

Seven minutes and fifty-eight seconds later, they run back out onto the bridge hand in hand, Charles’s hair standing up in every direction and Erik’s throat bearing a distinct pink mark that’s not quite hidden by his uniform collar. Logan rolls his eyes; Scott mutters, “I miss the days when you two used to at least pretend you were playing chess, seriously,” though he’s smirking when he says it.

“Erik has excellent strategic planning skills,” Charles says loftily, sitting down in his chair, wincing slightly, “and we did in fact play a game or two. Once in a while.”

Erik takes his own seat, waits a beat, leans over and picks up Charles’s hand, kisses recently extremely busy fingertips, and adds, “Naked.”

“Oh god,” Scott says. “My brain.”

“Were they in the briefing room again?” Hank says over the intercom. “It’s not a _de_ briefing room, you two.”

“Oh god.”

“Hey, I thought it was clever!”

“Not you. _Them_.”

Logan puts his feet up on the astronavigator’s console and contributes, “I’m still votin’ for all our big team pep talks movin’ to the mess hall. Like, as of two years ago, Chuck.”

“Oh, now, come on,” Charles says, sounding mostly amused and just a bit distressed. “We’re hardly that bad.”

“Yep, you are.”

“You _so_ are.”

“Constantly.”

Charles looks at Erik; Erik says, “They have a point.”

Charles sighs. “Do you think we should tell them about the table in the mess hall?”

“Oh _god_.”

“Behave,” Erik says, “all of you. Tell me we’ve ended up where I asked you to go.”

Logan transfers the cigar to the other side of his mouth, and says around it, “Yep. Sir. XO.”

“On screen, then.”

The screen shimmers. The planet comes up. White, glittering, opalescent: a serene snowflake hanging in the black velvet of space.

“Oh,” Charles breathes, hand tightening around Erik’s, “it’s lovely.”

“It has near-Earth-normal atmosphere. Slightly higher oxygen content. No inhabitants that we could see. There’s a shuttle ready, whenever you are. And it’s going to be a sunny day.”

“You…even stage-managed the weather…”

“Surprise,” Erik says, and rubs his thumb over the back of Charles’s hand. The weather hadn’t actually been under his control, not that he’s going to admit as much.

Charles grew up on a space station; on the massively engineered silvery central hub of his family’s vast business empire, surrounded by every luxury that could be built or bought, given a staggering credit allowance and the best electronic tutors and plush carpets to muffle the metallic deck plates. Charles grew up alone, a prince in a galactic fairy-tale, towers of books and dreams of the imagined scent of springtime-green grass, the blueness of a sky, the velvet whisper of a sage-leaf over an ungloved palm. A family that might remember to see him without needing to carve fifteen minutes a week out from in between board meetings and vodka-scented peacock-feathered society masquerade balls. A hand that might hold his when he was scared or brave.

Charles, for all the multitude of planet-surfaces he’s taken eager first steps across in the years since his Academy graduation, has never seen or felt or tasted snow. Erik has. Erik has been to countless worlds, searching for Shaw, for his mother’s killer, for vengeance; Erik cannot, however, recall paying any attention to the sensation of snowfall on his skin, or any desire to laugh with sheer overflowing happiness at a single breath of crisp clear planetary air.

Holding Charles’s hand, he thinks he might, this time.

Charles had diverted the starship to pick him up, that day, as he’d been exhaling the last of his life support and watching the stars blur through his cracked viewscreen and feeling triumphant and hollow, the end of his quest, the end of everything. His last memory before passing out had been of spectacular sapphire eyes appearing above him, glorious even through the haze, and he’d wondered whether his mother’d been right and angels and G-d and an afterlife could be real after all, and wouldn’t she be amused that he was seeing it now…

He’d woken in a state-of-the-art Fleet-polished infirmary, and after a few moments and a brief intercom chat he couldn’t quite overhear, the blue eyes’d reappeared at his side and said interestedly, “Hello, I’m Charles, I’m very sorry we couldn’t manage to save your ship, but we did get you off safely, and who’re you?”

“It’s beautiful,” Charles says in the present, gazing at the snow-globe vision with shining eyes. “Oh, Erik. Thank you. Are we making planetfall now, or do we need to see about any equipment?”

“Whenever you give the order. There’s already cold-weather gear on the shuttle.” And extra thermal layers, and spare support servos for Charles’s legs, just in case the current set can’t handle uneven footing and chilly temperatures and snowball fights and laughter, or in case Charles feels like cheating and wearing both sets and giving himself superhuman running and jumping abilities, with that unrepentant cheeky grin that prompts Erik’s heart to perform dizzying acrobatic leaps, and makes another part of Erik’s body leap upwards as well.

He’d said later on that first day, standing in the not-yet-scandalized briefing room, utterly baffled by the words that’d just come out of that so-inviting mouth, “You can’t want me to stay.”

“Yes,” Charles had said patiently, “I can.”

“I’ve killed people.”

“You’ve not attempted killing me yet.”

He could have. If he’d wanted to. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know you’re trying to warn me—someone you don’t, as you’ve helpfully pointed out, even know—about potential danger.” Charles had tipped his head to one side and smiled, and the universe trembled. No need for torpedoes or blaster-beams or firefights, not with that weapon in reserve. Whole galaxies would surrender blissfully.

“I need you, besides,” Charles had gone on, thoughtfully. “My bridge crew likes to tell me that I’m far too enthusiastic about exploration, too opposed to shooting people who deserve it, and too easily distracted by science, which I don’t think is entirely fair, because scientific discoveries are never a distraction, that’s why we’re here, after all, I don’t mean here in the briefing room, but here in general, you and me and the stars, and isn’t that astonishing when you think about it, all the elements that make up our bodies in this room and equally the nebula out there—”

“Your bridge crew is correct.”

This had earned him an injured expression. Erik tried very hard to remain unmoved. He wasn’t certain he was entirely successful, and was annoyed with himself.

“I could just drop you off at the nearest outpost—we won’t be out of settled space for a good six weeks, and of course if you have somewhere to go, someone waiting for you—but…well…you also play four-dimensional chess…I wasn’t prying but we collected most of a broken travel set among your possessions, and I was rather hoping you might play with me. My crew collectively refuses.”

“What do you _want_ from me,” Erik had said, hopelessly confronted with the sudden prospect of a future. Possibilities woven at the brink of death, blooming out of starlight and nebulae and sparkling eyes.

“I told you,” Charles had said, raising both eyebrows. “Chess?”

One game. Ten. Twenty. Decadent Old-Earth scotch in Charles’s quarters, golden and intoxicating and burning like honeyed fire as he swallowed. A smile tugging reluctantly at his lips when Charles touched a tiger-striped lily on a tropical planet and turned to him under twinned moonlight, eyes huge. Kisses in the corridor, hands roaming everywhere, tripping over each other in their haste to fall into Erik’s bed. It’d been closer.

The way Charles had gone silent and still after his Academy-commissioned original Executive Officer, a generally well-liked but often careless man, had stepped backwards into a nest of carnivorous sea grass while recording a video of the purple-hued shoreline, and died within seconds. Erik had been more afraid, watching Charles retreat inside himself and answer questions with a headshake or a nod, than he could ever remember being in his life, and that was shocking, and his heart had hurt inside his chest.

Charles had finished writing and signing and sending the official letter, all without speaking; had stood up from the desk and turned around, and Erik’d shot to his feet from where he’d been poised on the side of the bed and held out both hands and said, “Charles, please, talk to me, I am here,” and Charles had stepped into the circle of offered arms and breathed, in and out, and let Erik hold him.

“I love you,” Charles says, gazing at the luminescent world on the viewscreen. “So very much, Erik.”

“Hey,” Logan says. “He just gave the order. I found the thing. It was in my report.”

“I programmed the course.”

“I packed the weaponry.”

Everyone turns to look at Raven. She shrugs. “There might be lizard people.”

“I hope they’re friendly,” Charles says. “And I adore you all. Obviously. But Erik’s the only one of you with whom I wish to enjoy chess matches in the mess hall after hours.”

“Noooo,” Scott moans, and Logan throws his cigar at them. Erik takes some satisfaction in plucking it neatly out of the air and crushing it into dust for the maintenance-bots to sweep up while they’re gone.

He says, to Charles, “Perhaps we can discover a means of enjoying chess in the snow?” and Charles starts laughing, getting to his feet and pulling Erik up with him, breathless and fingers entwined. “Whenever I give the order, you said. Given. Now.”

The bridge crew, in the background, begins making exuberant noises about shore leave and snow forts and whether the lizard people might play laser tag through ice mazes if asked nicely. Erik looks down at Charles; Charles tips his head up to look right back and mouths, “love you,” soundless and intimate, chests and shoulders and hips pressed together and warm at the heart of the bridge.

“I gave you a planet,” Erik says, “of course you do,” and leans down to kiss him.

“So you did,” Charles says. “I love the way you kiss me when you’re pleased with yourself. Do that again. Once we’re there.”

“I have to wait?”

“Well…I do want to at least touch my surprise before we have sex involving it. Is it soft? I know there’s ice in it, but I always thought it _ought_ to be soft.”

“…I should hope not.”

“I meant the snow!”

“I know,” Erik says, and walks him over to the lift, pushes the shuttle-bay button, kisses him again while thinking about the portable heaters and water-resistant blankets and his own miniature espionage-quality camouflage field, appropriated without leave from his last mission and guaranteeing that he can keep Charles absolutely gloriously naked and cozily warm and simultaneously wholly unnoticed by anyone passing by. Just himself, and Charles, and the endless sunlit fluffy snow.

“You’re smiling,” Charles says, through the wandering kisses.

“I have plans,” Erik says, and devotes himself to leaving Charles wordless and flushed and wobbly on his feet for the rest of the brief lift-journey.

When the shuttle lands and they walk out into the blue and white expanse, Charles gazes around wide-eyed, breathing out just to see the plume of air, boots making soft crunching sounds in the ice. They’ve landed under a cloud, though there’s open sky in the distance; snow’s just finishing up a previous fall in lazy drifting flecks, one or two at a time, twirling in the pale daylight. Charles sticks out his tongue, which by all standard probability measurements shouldn’t work with such scattered flakes, and of course catches a sparkle of winter on the first try and squeezes Erik’s hand in excitement, looking only a little like a top-of-his-class two-year veteran starship captain and mostly like the definition of holiday mornings. Flakes land in his eyelashes, on one cheekbone, twinkling like priceless crystal, adorning him with jewels, every last snowdrop fighting all the others for the honor of landing on that skin.

“It tastes like water,” Charles marvels, teatime-and-fireplace accent purely thrilled by this ordinary revelation. Erik says, “You do know what snow is, Charles, you’re a scientist,” and then kisses him, and it’s the best water Erik’s ever tasted in the universe, hydrogen and oxygen and Charles’s laughing mouth.


End file.
